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I used to be a gamer. I played in a clan for a while too. There’s a lot of great guys in there. I made friends and being a chic wasn’t a problem. But, and a big but, where there is misogyny it’s really bad. So I don’t want to condemn the whole group, but where it does occur, the gaming platform provides some guys an amplification of very abusive sentiment. You have boys and men saying they are going to rape you, and if they get a frag, they say things like, you’re a bitch that got raped. Now, they say things like this to other guys too, but if its known you are female, it is relentless. There is even virtual gangrape/frag, where the other team singles out the female player on the other team and gangs up on her. So what Ms. Pakozdi experienced doesn’t surprise me. Again, I need to emphasize that this wasn’t the case with everyone or even the majority, but it is important to address.

I’d like to share a positive story about online gaming. My Lord Of The Rings Online guild was the first place I came out as trans. I had been playing the game for a while with a good bunch of mature people (I can’t recall witnessing any sexist behaviour while playing LOTRO, tbh), but was getting rather bored of it. Around this time, my repressed trans feelings erupted. I needed to share with someone, but I was still too scared to talk to RL friends. I hit on the idea of posting on the guild messageboard; I figured that if they didn’t accept me, I was going to leave the game anyway so it wouldn’t really matter. Happily, the acceptance and support was overwhelming; it was a great call that I made and I will always have the fondest memories of my time with that game.

I’m pretty sure we established here, beyond a scientific doubt, several months ago, that all natural food is made of dark matter. But, being someone who rejects your reality (generic “your”) and substitutes my own, I’m holding out for strings. By the laws of magic (law of similarities), eating long skinny foods, like spaghetti, string beans and shredded chicken with sliced hot green peppers, will make you taller or thinner or both. Don’t eat dumplings or cavatelli; they will make you fat. Many thanks to my friends Maggie and Theresa for helping flesh out (snirk) my theory.

What I really worry about is, with this new sexual harassment law, how are French men supposed to flirt and get laid? Will they know when it’s okay to say hi — er, bon jour, mademoiselle? Will they be terrified of getting into elevators with ladies? I don’t think they’ve thought this through…

In a few generations, there won’t be any more French people, so the problem will solve itself. It’s all part of the left wing liberal feminist atheist lizard alien plot to annihilate the human race (because they are all the ignorant dupes of the Otis Elevator Company, of course.)

I think I understand why some places are so full of hate and others are not.

Any comment field is a community. By opening up for comments, you invite people in to participate in the community which is built around the video or blog post you posted. Building and maintaining communities takes time and effort.

Big sites like YouTube or Reddit, where everyone already has an account, and most people are already logged in make it easy for someone to just pop in and quickly post whatever is on their mind at the time, such as “hey, nice tits!”, “you suck!”, “get a life” or worse.

Another thing is that on YouTube and Reddit, no matter how long I’ve used them, I can’t tell who’s saying what. I never get to know people. They all just blend into each other. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel like there are people in the other end. It’s just a lot of text. That’s why I don’t want to participate. I now avoid Reddit and I’ve installed a plugin to hide YouTube comments.

Here on Skepchick, on the other hand, people feel like real people. I’m not sure why, but it could be because they behave like real people. But why do they behave like real people? I suspect this is because everyone else here do, and that is because someone has put in a lot of work to make this community work.

I think it’s a bit like the difference between going to a function where you might not know everyone, but you know that all the attendees have **something** in common. And visiting to a shopping centre or a street on the other side of town where you don’t know anyone and it’s pure chance if you even see a familiar face, let alone get to speak to them.

And if you were to visit the other side of town, standing on a box and shouting at people that you are right and they are wrong would be seen as very arrogant. Persisting in such behavior would make you a real-life troll.

(I’m using the general “you”. I suspect you would never do such a thing, mildlymagnificent. :)

I find that I make an extra effort to be kind and gentle to strangers I encounter on the internet, and the harder it is to tell who they are and if they are in fact real humans, the harder I must try.

This is why I generally avoid communicating with people I don’t know on the internet, and prefer to talk them in real life. I can then get instant feedback if I make a mistake, and correct it by way of an apology.